Category Archives: Around the globe

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I’ve long liked Robert Gates, the sort of bipartisan, decent leader that needs to be a model for many others. Nice interview today with Fareed Zakaria, a far-too-rare moment of thoughtful analysis rather than partisan posturing.

In a chapter in Stephen Colbert’s brilliant and “truthy” book, I Am America, and So Can You, he lampoons and mocks various religions for their quirks. When he gets to Islam, he nervously pronounces it a true and fine religion, praising the Prophet profusely, before getting back to his next victim.

That revealed in the most telling way possible what a supercharged matter it is to make light of Muslim beliefs. It is equally hard to candidly critique the democracy of Israel. So, regarding the Freeman incident, let me just say that I am delighted to see things happen here that are pleasing to Israel’s staunchest supporters. Peace out, in more ways than one.

Gideon Levy, in Israel’s mainstream liberal Haaretz newspaper, meditates here on the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden desire to build alliances with the political center. Levy goads Netanyahu to carry out his more ambitious plans — and in so doing, he indicates that Netanyahu and other hawks find it easier to talk a good game than to bring it to completion.

HONG KONG — I continue to soak up the economic news here, in this finance-obsessed city, and ponder whether traditional capitalism is being forged into something new in the crucible of global economics.

Just a few years ago, smart people claimed that states are becoming less relevant than markets. But now that the markets are collapsing, all the businesses in Asia and America and Europe are begging states to bail them out. After all, GM can’t force you to buy its car; but GM can beg Uncle Sam to tax you in order to bail out GM. It’s happening around the world, as China and other nations are readying massive bailouts and job-creation programs.

The premise of libertarians and small-government conservatives is that the market should run free, unfettered by government policies, taxes or regulations. The rub is that, when industries in Country B are getting a boost from Country B’s tax coffers, you’re no longer in a “free market.” You can have a market that’s regulated to a larger or smaller degree, but you no longer can claim to keep government “out.”

Chinese officials are apparently worried that their investment in America’s massive debt could be threatened if other nations start pulling out of investing in America’s debt. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but I could imagine some market forces or political forces pushing money from Dubai, Russia and elsewhere away from America, causing the U.S. to suffer and leaving China holding the bag.

It’s a lot of things, but it’s not a “free market” anymore. Governments run economies. Our government has run a debt-ridden economy — and thus is now even more beholden to various to outside forces than would otherwise have been the case.

Good questions here from John Galt. I’d note that bin Laden’s smirking vow to bankrupt us came more than a year into the Iraq war, once it was obvious to all that things didn’t go as “planned.”

If the war had been carried out as quickly, cheaply, and efficiently as Rumsfeld-Cheney had claimed, bin Laden surely would have moved on to find something else to crow about. But because it became a costly quagmire that Cheney-Rumsfeld claimed was a central front in the war on terror, bin Laden could claim that the jihadist movement would ultimately bankrupt us, at least in part because we would fight hard rather than fight smart.

So when I write that the President has “been Osama’s best friend, wasting American resources in a futile effort to get the world to bend to our will,” I’m saying that he got reckless in the wake of 9/11, despite his honorable intentions. I believe, from my experiences with the Muslim world, that more jihadist recruits were created via the Iraq war than would have been the case had we focused on careful police work in Afghanistan.

Isn’t it astounding that Bush is leaving in one day, without having found bin Laden, dead or alive, after his supporters mocked Clinton after 9/11 for not catching bin Laden? I’d say some of the Iraq money should have been spent on finding him, and the rest should have gone to lowering our deficit, in order to help keep your taxes low.

Bruce Robbins, a Jewish scholar at Columbia University, argues here that the U.S. should cut off aid to Israel until it shows greater concern for innocents and for UN law.

I think it’s another example of how the American Jewish voice regarding Israel, far from monolithic, increasingly can be seen as a fascinating dialogue. We have that conversation here on this very blog frequently, in the form of our own Jonathan D. and Gail-Tzipporah.

Nothing is more human than the desire for aggressive vengeance. As the Financial Times’ astute writer Gideon Rachman notes, there is a downside as it relates to India’s response to the Mumbai attacks:

[T]he “war on terrorism” will not be won by killing terrorists. That was certainly the view of most of the Indian politicians and security experts that I spoke to last September. They were sceptical about US strikes inside Pakistan and advanced the usual arguments. Bombing suspected terrorist bases was bound to cause civilian casualties. That would only bring fresh recruits for the jihadist cause. The received opinion in Delhi, at the time, was that the problem was still best dealt with by Pakistan.

Ironically, the Indians are now under huge pressure to emulate the US tactics that they were criticising. Some sort of Indian military response to the Mumbai horrors may be unavoidable. But the Indians should hang on to their restraint as far as possible.

A military confrontation between India and Pakistan – two nuclear-armed neighbours – would obviously be extremely dangerous. A confrontation with India would also strengthen all the most sinister forces in Pakistan – the Islamists and the elements in the security establishment that back them.

Having said that, I exhorted my mother, who’s still in Islamabad, to get back to the States soon. The political black hole in South Asia is pulsing more menacingly than ever.

I was moved by this photo of a couple of Pakistani men grieving for children lost in Pakistan’s latest catastrophe — a quake that would have done minimal damage in Los Angeles due to better construction standards. As I told my mother a few days ago, still there in Islamabad, that country seems to be under a dark cloud.

Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf wanted to help his country, but he also wanted to cling to power, because he convinced himself he was essential to his country’s salvation.

That’s to be expected. The gene that makes a person the kind of alpha dog who leads others is the same gene that makes a person cling to a leadership role after he’s no longer welcome.

This wouldn’t have happened if Musharraf listened to my humble advice a few years ago… (Please forgive the dated photo.) Instead, he’s attempting to choose between resigning in disgrace or being impeached. I’m not sure he’s being handled wisely or fairly, but this wouldn’t have happened if he focused more on succession and less on personal success.